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THE ERNEST SANDEEN and RICHARD SULLIVAN
PRIZES in FICTION and POETRY
SPONSORED BY THE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM,
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
IN CONJUNCTION WITH
THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESSGUIDELINES
The Sandeen Prize in Poetry and the Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction are awarded to authors who have published at least one volume of short fiction or one volume of poetry. Please include a photocopy of the copyright and the title page of your previous volume. Vanity press publications do not fulfill this requirement.Though the Sandeen/Sullivan Prizes are open to any author who has published at least one book of short stories or one collection of poetry, we will pay special attention to second volumes. Please include a vita and/or a biographical statement which includes your publishing history. We will be glad to see a selection of reviews of the earlier collection.
Please submit two copies of your manuscript and inform us if the manuscript is available on computer disk. Include an SASE for acknowledgment of receipt of your submission. If you would like your manuscript returned, please send an SASE. Manuscripts will not otherwise be returned. A $15 administrative fee should accompany submissions. Make checks payable to University of Notre Dame. Every contestant will receive a one-year free subscription to the Notre Dame Review.
The volumes of the Sandeen/Sullivan Prizes will be published in trade paperback format with a limited signed hardback edition (primarily for libraries). The author will be offered a standard contract with the University of Notre Dame Press. There will be a $1,000 prize, a $500 award and a $500 advance against royalties from the Notre Dame Press.
The next Richard Sullivan prize submission period will be May l- Sept. 1, 2011; the next Ernest Sandeen prize period is May 1- Sept. 1, 2012.
Selection of the winners is expected by the end of January following submission. Both the Sandeen and the Sullivan Prizes are awarded biannually, but judged quadrennially.
We intend to invite the winners to Notre Dame at the time of publication for a prize presentation and reading.
If you have any further questions, please write to the Director of Creative Writing, Sandeen/Sullivan Prizes, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5639; email, creativewriting@nd.edu.
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CALL FOR BOOK SUBMISSIONS
Submission deadline: Aug 1, 2011
Please send submissions to: liquidgoldbook[at]gmail[dot]com
Liquid Gold: Black Mothers on Breastfeeding
Mother’s Day 2011, two mama bloggers swarmed the internet with intimate and loving images of Black Women Breastfeeding. It’s powerful message, creating community and demanding space in the discourse of maternal and child wellness specific to Black women. These images were shared in hopes to encourage and validate our choice as Black mothers to parent our babies as we choose. Something that was once legacy and inherent to Black culture has thus become such a revolutionary act.
With the bombardment of free formula samples given to us at our prenatal visits, delivered to us in our mail, offered to us in our social service offices, pushed at community events, breastfeeding has become and been deemed more “complicated” than ever. The message that is being sent to Black women is that when it comes to breastfeeding it is simply too hard, takes too much time, is unclean, and unnatural. All of these ideas (and more) have perpetuated the myth amongst health care providers and professionals that BLACK WOMEN DO NOT BREASTFEED. With only 110 BabyFriendlyhospitalsintheUnitedStates (out of over 10,000 hospitals total) where can Black mamas reference to receive the love, support and encouragement to fulfil their breastfeeding destiny?
This book/anthology will be an extension of the viral Brown Mamas Breastfeeding Project. We aim to create discourse on Black women and breastfeeding, to display how breastfeeding is a part of our culture and legacy, to examine the social, emotional, and physical barriers to breastfeeding, to exhibit examples of perseverance when the breastfeeding gets tough, and to provide tips on how to maintain the breastfeeding relationship if you and baby are separated, while simultaneously sharing stories, images and creative works of and by real breastfeeding, Black mamas.
Submissions to be considered:
*Photos (must be 300 dpi or greater–most digital cameras satisfy this request. Please no cell phone pictures.)
*Written reflections on breastfeeding (extended breastfeeding, multiples, etc.)
*Poetry, songs & other creative writings (no longer than 2 pages in 12 pt Times New Roman, please)
*Original Breastfeeding art
Consider these topics for your submission(s) (no longer than 2 pages in 12 pt Times New Roman, please):
*relactation
*breastfeeding for another mama’s baby
*bf despite what doctors, nurses, midwives told you
*bf in public spaces
*family legacies of bf
*how you’ve dealt with bf difficulties (engorgement, mastitis, sore/cracked nipples)
*seeking support
*mother-child bond
*examples of perseverance in bf
*bf and physical challenges
*text messages or phone call transcriptions of black mamas supporting each other with bf
*anything we haven’t included or thought of!
Submissions should be mailed to liquidgoldbook@gmail.com.
For more info about the project visit: itsbetterathome.wordpress.com or soulvegmama.com
Get to writing breastfeeding, Black mamas!! We want to hear from you!
The Patricia Dobler Poetry Award
This contest is open to women writers* over the age of 40 who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, currently living in the U.S., who have not published a full-length book of poetry, fiction, or non-fiction (chapbooks excluded).
- Each poem must be unpublished, up to 75 lines/poem
- Up to two poems, of any style, per submission
- Submissions must be postmarked by or before September 1, 2011
- Submissions received after September 8, 2011 will not be accepted, regardless of postmark date
- Winner will be notified by September 30, 2011
With each two-poem submission, submit the following:
- Cover sheet with name, address, phone number, E-mail, titles of poems
- Check/money order for $20, made payable to Carlow University
- Clearly addressed, standard-letter-sized self-addressed, stamped envelope for notification
The author’s name, address, and any identifying information should not appear on any poem.
All entries will receive a copy of Voices from the Attic.
Judge: Denise Duhamel
Send entries to:
The Patricia Dobler Poetry Award
Jan Beatty, director of Creative Writing
Carlow University
3333 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
The winner will receive the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, in the form of round-trip travel and lodging as a participating guest of Carlow’s MFA residency in Pittsburgh, PA, January 3-13, 2012; publication in Voices from the Attic; and a reading at Carlow University in Pittsburgh with judge Denise Duhamel.
>> About Patricia Dobler For more information, please contact Ellie Wymard, PhD, at 412-578-6346.
*Current Carlow students or employees are not eligible
Cheryl Clarke:
The Never-Ending Resource
that is Black Queerness
“There is queer activism in the African diaspora and wherever that movement is, there is always cultural production.”
I was introduced to the iconic Cheryl Clarke while organizing a conference on spirituality and sexuality with writer and scholar Ashon T. Crawley for the Newark Pride Alliance in Newark, NJ in 2008. Ashon and I marveled for days over the fact that we had engaged in a few contentious planning meetings with Clarke, and survived! Our meeting spurred an instant love affair with the black queer literary luminary whose voice, work, and life has continued to make space for our own. Since 2008, Clarke and I have been involved in several projects and after each I end by asking myself: “Why have we—black folk, queer folk, feminist folk, and other folk—yet to fully recognize this genius among us?” This is my second interview with Clarke. The first was a conversation captured between Clarke and Amiri Baraka in Newark, NJ. In many ways, this is my way of turning attention to a black queer artist whose work deserves increased attention.
Clarke was born in 1947 in Washington, DC. She received a B.A. from Howard University and an M.A., M.S.W. and Ph. D. from Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey. She is the author of several books including her collection of prose and poetry, The Days of Good Looks, and her critical work, “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement. Clarke’s “After Mecca” is the first scholarly work investigating the role of black women poets/writers situated within the ten-year period of 1968-78, a decade encompassing the Black Arts Movement (BAM). BAM was a political, aesthetical movement that was spurred as a result of the Black consciousness/Black Power movement as a means to further the development and transmission of black expressive culture towards the end of radical communal change. Clarke’s work demonstrates that women (including lesbian-identified women) made important feminist interventions in a staunchly sexist (and heterosexist) aesthetical space and used some of BAM’s tactics to advance their own movement.
Since 2009, Clarke has been the Dean of Students for Livingston Campus at Rutgers. Prior to that position, she was the Director of the Office of Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities at Rutgers.
Moore: In your book, “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement, you claim Black Arts Movement (BAM) tutelage and “blackness” as that which awakened you to poetry in the 1960s and feminism and lesbianism in the 70s. Can you say a bit more about both as modes of inspiration and preparation for your work?
Clarke: I was studying literature at Howard University during this time (1965-1969) and saw first-hand how provocative words are as poems. I had also studied the Harlem Renaissance (which I continue to study) and had read of how instrumental writing, publishing, and public readings— “salons” then— were to shifting the notions people had of black people, especially white people’s notions but also black people’s. During the sixties, we spent quite a lot of air time critiquing the “New Negro Renaissance” as bourgeois; however, we used some of its tactics to once again build a movement of new writing. As I say in my book, the Black Arts Movement was not the first time black people “reinvented themselves ‘new.’” So—we, i.e., lesbian-feminists—black lesbian feminists, black gay feminists, as well as the gay liberation movement used the “voice” strategy to inspire changes of attitude, to teach, and to critique. During the Black Power Movement, young people calling themselves “Black” refused to stand upon the politics of black respectability and deference to white people. White people were called out for their racism, specifically for their Eurocentrism; and backsliding black people were called out too. We got “loud” on us if you know what I mean. I remember being in any number of conversations on campus and being corrected by well-read activists—men and women—on historical sources, on who was trustworthy and who was assimilationist or paternalistic. Anyway, education is always a chief factor in developing a movement, especially a movement around identity: Where have you been? Where are you going? And what the hell are you doing presently? As Wahneema Lubiano says about Black Nationalism as common sense in her article in the edited volume (by Lubiano) The House That Race Built, that Black Nationalism gives us history. So, we used its tools to give us the awareness, history, and voice we needed to foster our movements for sexual and gender identity.
Moore: BAM was concerned with the politics and aesthetics of blackness. It was, at once, a black literary and cultural expressive movement that provided space for the penning of prose and performing of the poetic. BAM also prompted the creation of Black theater groups and literary journals. In many ways, BAM represented the dismantling of barriers that tended to neatly separate poetry/prose and performance/written expression. What was the benefit of this intervention? How did it mess up, in good ways, the artistic landscape in the 1960s-70s? And, what are the implications for the work of the artist today?
Clarke: In a certain way BAM showed us that there are no neat separations of artistic forms, especially if we were to cast aside the Western lens. However, at the same time, nationalism insisted upon such purity of identity and polarities of political allegiance: “You are either with me or against me.” Theater and poetry, particularly, coalesced. The poetry reading. The production of someone’s play in a local venue. This was all possible in the early days (1965-1970). The re-use of old buildings as cultural spaces also as political spaces—spaces in which people organized to change the quality of life in their communities. In this way, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements were very much like Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association, which touched so many local black communities throughout this country—and the world. But also, Black Power and Black Arts activists had been involved in the Southern movement and knew the potency of grass roots organizing. And so, in the era of gay, lesbian, feminist liberation, the tools of voice, first projected by Malcolm, then Black Arts, then Black Power, stood us in good stead.
Moore: Kalamu ya Salaam credits BAM for instigating the “multiculturalism movement” in America. He argues that BAM challenged “cultural sovereignty” and encouraged non-majority populations to do their “own thing.” Do you agree with his assessment?
Clarke: Yes, I agree. The challenge to “cultural sovereignty” is key. Always, because it rears its ugly head constantly. Address the West, a “grey hideous space,” as Baraka says. However, have these “non-majority movements” routed out their sexist, homophobic, and heterosexist prerogatives? Kalamu is a good man, however
Moore: It could be argued that BAM had a similar influence on the emergence of the queer artistic voice, black and non-black. For example, you connect the writerly and activist trajectory of black feminist lesbian poet Audre Lorde to BAM in “After Mecca.” Can you speak to similar genealogies among other queer artists?
Clarke: Probably. June Jordan. She had a similar trajectory as Lorde. Started out as a promoter of the Black Arts Movement. Edited a book of black arts poetry in the late 60s. Called herself a feminist. Toni Cade Bambara and Alice Walker as well, though neither of them are lesbians, [Editor’s Note: Alice Walker discreetly revealed some of her same gender loving relationships in the early aughts] but they both considered themselves more feminist than not. I mean Alice Walker is a feminist. Toni Cade Bambara was more circumspect about what she called herself—other than “black woman.” Interestingly, I can only think of women. I guess I count myself among those who had a similar trajectory, though I was not a Black Arts Movement activist. But I certainly was a witness. Samuel Delany has been writing since the 1950s, but he was not really a card-carrying member of the Black Arts Movement. But he has always been out as black and gay, even though it may have been easy for him to pass.
Moore: It is often noted that BAM allowed for the wide dissemination of Black Arts through the launching of independent publishing houses and nationally distributed periodicals that created new space for artists’ work. You even served as the editor of one such periodical, namely, Conditions. Are publishing spaces as readily available for the emerging political artist today? What challenges remain the same and what opportunities are present
Clarke: I served as a member of the editorial collective of Conditions Magazine from 1981 to 1990. We were committed to an all-lesbian collective and a multiracial one at that. We were committed to the same diversity in our publishing of original work by writers, and we published some notable women: Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Hacker, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Dorothy Allison, Jewelle Gomez, Michelle Cliff, Margaret Randall, A.J. Verdelle, Sapphire, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, the late Terri Jewell, Melinda Goodman, Jackie Woodson, Cherríe Moraga, the late Paula Gunn Allen, the late Pat Parker, Barbara Smith, Shay Youngblood, Cherri Muhanji, Breena Clarke, and many more. Seventeen issues of Conditions were published between 1977 and 1990. We published two international issues and a retrospective. Feminists and lesbian feminists came to understand because of the example of Black Arts that a movement had to control its means of cultural production. And for a while lesbian feminists did—presses, newspapers, journals, and bookstores. No, publishing spaces are not as readily available as they once were because the ways in which people read and produce are very different. We have the Internet. We produce work through it. But we still need the bricks and mortar and the material object, the book, in our hands. The challenge, as always, is to write, and get the writing out there. We have the opportunity to create new venues for our work. I think of Lisa Moore of Redbone Press, who produces so much of the work of black queer writers in the diaspora. I think of the work Steven Fullwood does at the Schomburg with the LGBT, In the Life, Same Gender Loving Archive. I think of the work the black lesbian poet, Arisa White, does through her program “Out of Necessity” in California with pairing beginning LGBT writers with experienced LGBT writers. Then the programming done by Fire and Ink, the queer black writers conference that has occurred twice since 2002. We have the opportunity to write about our writers—which is always my project, writing about black queer writers. Blackness and queerness are never-ending resources.
Moore: Do we have a contemporary movement that is opening space for black queer artists? If not, what could and should that space look like? And, how might it take form as a global movement?
Clarke: Yes, we do. We do have a contemporary global movement. There is queer activism in the African diaspora and wherever that movement is, there is always cultural production. I learned from my work with Conditions that we have been a global movement from the beginning of this phase of queer liberation. But this question is too difficult for me to answer in its entirety—if that is even possible.
Moore: You have worked within and without the academy. In what ways has this “border crossing” impacted your writing/activism?
Clarke: I stayed in the academy so that I could do my work outside of it. (I needed to pay my rent and later my mortgage.) During the 1980s my work in the academy was more of a “job.” Something I did so that, as I said, I could do my writing, my work with Conditions, travel, serve on boards that needed commitment (e.g., New York Women Against Rape, New Jersey Women and AIDS Network, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, Astraea Foundation for Social Justice, and now the Newark Pride Alliance). So, Rutgers was not my primary identity for many, many years. For many, many years, it was the lesbian feminist work that kept me going. However, Rutgers was a good place to network, and I always liked and respected many of the people I worked with. And I always tried to have a progressive stance around issues of freedom of expression, that is standing up for my beliefs, job equity, disenfranchised students issues, public programming reflective of underrepresented concerns, teaching courses on black women’s writing, black queer writing, the black freedom movement, and introductory women’s and gender studies courses, establishing our social justice learning community, and for 17 years directing the office for services to LGBT students. So, Rutgers at once gave me a platform for my work as well as a place to be just an administrator. Being in the academy has enabled me to do my work for the most part, because I have never taken my place within the academy too seriously. And believe me, I have had some setbacks there. Between 1998 and 2002 I worked for a very homophobic vice president and worked under the leadership of a very homophobic and conservative university president for 12 years. This was not fun. We had to deal with Republicans in Washington during the 1980s; and, at Rutgers, since everything comes to the academy later, we had to deal with Republicans at Rutgers in the 1990s. This was very impactful. During this whole time I, of course, continued to write, continued to study, and published my critical study of the Black Arts Movement, “After Mecca,” and my collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980-2005. I received my doctorate in 2000, which made me very happy. I worked for it from 1991 to 2000 in the English Department at Rutgers, but actually, I started in 1969 and stopped in 1974. Those nine years of study during the 90s were some of my happiest times. So, really it took me 15 years to finish, but I like to say 30 years. I think that’s somewhat of a record. But writing that dissertation gave me the opportunity to make a contribution to African-American literary criticism.
The hardest part about writing is, as you know, to keep doing it. I have just finished my last edit of my manuscript of poems, which I have been trying to publish since 1993—well, only some of the poems; I have written new ones. I hope to have another book of poetry published before I die. I also hope to have another critical study of black writing done before I die. With all the work we have to do for our communities, taking that space to think and write is difficult, but must be done for it satisfies the soul—not just my soul but other souls as well. I have a difficult enough time trying to prepare for my classes. And teaching is another commitment of mine which I wish I could perform better.
Moore: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka is credited as the “progenitor” of BAM. I recently interviewed the two you. Was there anything said that opened up new understandings of BAM and its influence on your work? Was there anything left unsaid that you would like to note now, particularly as it relates to Baraka’s past sexist and heterosexist statements and present (presumed) silences on issues of homosexuality?
Clarke: Amiri is Baraka is LeRoi Jones is Chairman Baraka is Imamu Baraka. He is one of the most brilliant people alive. But also one of the most burdened and haunted. We can talk about his silences at another time. Meanwhile, let’s think about our own and how little they protect us. Thank you for the interview, Darnell. Always a pleasure to rap with you.
Zimbabwe to Egypt:
Reflections from Tahrir Square
I met Rumbidzai Dube in March 2009 at the Tactical Tech InfoActivism camp in Bangalore India. At the time she worked as a researcher within the Women’s Programme at the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) an NGO in Zimbabwe. Since then Rumbidzai has completed her Masters in Law (LLM Human Rights and Democratization in Africa) at the University of Pretoria in Pretoria, South Africa. She has worked as an intern for the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and is presently serving a second internship in Egypt with the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. Over the next six months Rumbidzai will be writing about her work and her observations of life in Cairo and the people’s revolution.
______________________________
As a Zimbabwean, an African, a black person and a woman, I cannot help but wish my life were different. No, I do not wish I had a different nationality-I love my country and all its beauty. I do not wish I were anything else but an African- I love the diversity that makes our continent what it is. I do not wish to be anything other than black- in fact I love being black because I do not believe in the stereotypes attached to being black. I am not barbaric! I do not eat human flesh! I do not live in a jungle! I am not ignorant though I do not claim to know everything there is to know in this world! I am not poor even though my bank account is empty! As one of my professors always said whereas some subscribe to the “I think therefore I am” theory by Rene Descartes as an African I believe “We are therefore I am.”Hence money does not make me rich, family does. When I have no family then I am poor.
When I wear something black there is definitely a difference between my skin complexion and that piece of clothing and I see the same difference when a ‘white’ person wears a white dress so maybe that label should be changed to dark skinned and light skinned instead. I love being a woman, ask any woman who is comfortable in her skin and she will tell you she does not wish to be recreated any differently. The reason I wish my life were different is that I hate the negativity attached to these identities that make my life more difficult than it should be. As a Zimbabwean I face repression from my own government. We cannot express ourselves freely, assemble freely, associate freely and choose who we want to govern us freely. As an African our nations are subjected to global politics characterized by the paradox of ‘equal’ nations yet some are more equal than others.’ This has caused untold suffering, particularly, to the African peoples through skewed negotiations on climate change. We constantly fight the war on the patenting of life saving drugs as against free and easy access to medicines. We are victims of conflicts fuelled by the availability of arms and weapons supplied by developed nations, the so called ‘War economies.” As a black person I am constantly made to feel I need to measure up to something. I still have not figured out what that something is since I certainly do not feel I am lacking in any respect. As for my struggle as woman, that cannot be told in this short space. I will leave it for another day and forum.
Where am I going with all this? Well here is my story…
Today I spent an hour in Tahrir Square, mingling with the thousands of Egyptians who were gathered there. Some were just sitting and discussing the recent developments in the country including the acquittal of some and conviction of other perpetrators of human rights violations during the |Jan|25| protests. Others were chanting slogans making demands from the Supreme Council of Armed Forces to implement the reforms that have been demanded since the Revolution began. Yes, there were factions in the Square. I came across one stand comprising youths that cried out “Allah Akbar” an Islamic phrase loosely translated to mean “God is the Most High.” I also found another one where they were playing Christian gospel music. It was clear there were different groupings in the Square but guess what, they were all in the Square.
They could have chosen to assemble in different squares but they did not. They came together, putting aside their differences for a greater purpose which was to put the message across clearly to the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces that this new earned right conceived during the Revolution shall neither be aborted nor miscarried. I also met a 14 year old blogger- yes fourteen. Before he has even reached the legal age of majority he understands that politics and political participation affects his life and impacts on his human rights. He does not shy away from it because ‘politics is a dirty game’-no. He takes charge and makes legitimate demands from the politicians in his country. I spent quality time with my close friends Alaa Abd El Fattah and Manal Bahey El Din Hassan who have been blogging for years at Manalaa.Net, exposing the Mubarak regime for the dictatorship that it was. Alaa got arrested several times by the police and today he stands with the rest of the Revolutionaries celebrating the fruits of his and many other people’s hard work. I walked within that Square for an hour and in all that time I did not get sexually harassed, neither did I hear any man whisper the obscene things that I am usually subjected to on the street. I was treated with respect and I did not feel conspicuous as a dark-skinned person amongst the crowds of light-skinned people.
What did all this mean to me?
As Zimbabweans, Africans, black people, women we can change our future. It takes patience, persistence and perseverance but it not impossible. Let history be remembered as the hair we shaved off our heads but let it not determine the kind of new hair we grow on our heads. Black people let us not remain victims of perceptions created ages ago and sustained for generations by people who suffer from a misplaced superiority complex. Africans let us not let the ghost of colonialism haunt us forever. Zimbabweans let us not pay for not having been born when the war of independence was fought. Women, let us stand strong against the skeleton that patriarchy has since become. We have been eating off the flesh of these things and I am sure pushing over the bones will not be such a hard task.
Back to Tahrir Square and Egypt…
Many people have argued that the culture of protests has become almost maniacal in the Arab world. Others argue that they have not seen how protesting has helped the Egyptian people and I quote my colleague, Paul speaking of the revolutionaries and the ousting of Mubarak (Paul and I studied for the Bachelor of Laws Honours Degree at the University of Zimbabwe)
“I do not see any good results coming from them. And do u believe they are the ones who removed him from power? I do not think so that is why they back in the streets bcoz their revolution was not home grown”
Well here is what I think. Protesting helped Egyptians get rid of a despotic government whose corruption had reached chronic levels. It ensured that their demands for justice against the perpetrators of human rights violations during the |Jan|25| protests were heard. Protesting ensured that property and money worth thousands of dollars belonging to the state which had been siphoned by the President and his wife was returned and handed over to the State. Through their concerted effort, Egyptians are setting a culture which if entrenched will see better respect, promotion and protection of human rights. How? Every time they gather in protest they are asserting their right to peaceful assembly and association as well as their right to freely express themselves.Every time they make political demands pertaining to law reform, constitutional amendments, as well as the formation of political parties and their participation in elections they are asserting the right to participate in the governance of their country. It definitely is not as simplistic as it sounds but this is one step (or however many it may be) positively taken and it is gaining momentum each day. The police and military authorities still resist this culture but their resistance is becoming weaker each day. The weaker it becomes the more entrenched these freedoms will be in Egyptian society, spelling a progressive realization of their rights.
It is also many steps ahead of the Zimbabwean scenario where attempts to hold peaceful protests are crushed every time. In Zimbabwe, we have a security system that harasses, arrests and detains lawyers for demanding the sanctity of the profession that they chose. Our system finds a group of brave women (the Women of Zimbabwe Arise-WOZA) as criminals yet these women are constantly advocating social justice. The Egyptians have certainly gone one step ahead in this regard and the more they gather in Tahrir Square and hold their peaceful protests with no interference from the state apparatus, the higher their chances of sustaining this exercise of their right.
No sexual harassment for an hour?
Yes, I have discovered that Egypt is one of those places where being a woman is particularly difficult. The way you dress, walk, talk and laugh is so scrutinized that you cannot help but be very self conscious. Men whisper all sorts of obscenities to you as they pass by. Others stalk you. Some even try to grab you and run-in public! Yet today I was in that Square and for a whole hour none of that happened yet there were thousands of men there. Why-I asked myself? The obvious answer is because the Revolution birthed a new culture of respect for women with leading figures like Dr Laila Soueif emerging as lead figures at some defining moments of the Revolution . Harassment of women was viewed as unacceptable behavior and hence that perception holds true. Yes-it might only be wholly observed in Tahrir Square and at moments such as the one I experienced today but there is no doubt with time it shall cascade down to the everyday lives of Egyptians. It will take time but as always everything that is good comes through hard work, perseverance and persistence.
A 14 year old blogger? Wow!
My first thought was; I am 27 and I have done close to nothing to share the knowledge I have on human rights, democracy and democratization, good governance and women’s rights? ZIP!! And I am very ashamed to admit this. My second thought was I wish I knew a 14 year old blogger in Zimbabwe, let alone one who blogs on human rights and political participation. It is this kind of awareness that we need to build in our youth in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa. A youth that is not polarized on political grounds. A youth that resists state patronage. A youth that questions policies and practices that do not benefit the wider population. We do not want a youth that is used to terrorise communities, or to rape women and girls, or to force communities to support a party or a government they clearly loathe. It is time that our 14 year olds developed an interest in the things that shape their future and the future of their countries rather than concentrating on figuring out how to put a condom on!
There is more but for now I will end here.
via blacklooks.org
What about the maid?
July 14, 2011
By Dan Moshenberg
Monday was World Population Day. At some point in October, the world population will hit seven billion. How is one to focus on seven billion people? Some say, focus on “trafficking”. In particular, focus on African women trafficked to other countries.
For example, Makeda. Makeda is Ethiopian. She works as a domestic worker “somewhere in the Middle East.” She has a hard life, a life largely defined by workplace abuse and exploitation, and by abuse and exploitation by “traffickers.”
The issue of “trafficking”, of coerced and abusive transport of workers, is critical and contentious. At the same time the trafficking framework too often displaces all other narratives.
So, let’s return to Makeda, but with a difference.
Makeda is an Ethiopian woman. She works as a domestic worker in another country. As a woman, as a worker, she has a hard life. How have African and African – derived domestic workers responded to such conditions?
Across the continent, domestic workers are on the move. For example, since 2000, the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union, SADSAWU, has been organizing, securing new legislation, new conditions, new consciousness. SADSAWU builds on decades, and centuries, of South African household workers organizing.
Domestic workers across the continent have organized since the invention of paid domestic labor. And African and African-derived domestic workers have been organizing in the United States.
This year, New York passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Who made that happen? Domestic Workers United, “an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers”. Women like “Esmerelda”, nanny, elder care provider, housekeeper, originally from Zambia.
Out of Domestic Workers United came the National Domestic Workers Alliance, organizing across the country. Yesterday, they brought 800 organizers and supporters to Washington to launch the national Caring Across Generations campaign.
Among the 800 were Dora Tweneboah and Margie Obeng, two young women just out of high school. Both Dora and Margie are from Ghana. Dora has been in the United States for four years, Margie was two years old when her family arrived. They are both youth organizers in the Tenants and Workers United of Northern Virginia, and they have something to say about “the plight” of domestic workers.
Dora commented: “Coming from a country where there is suffering and poverty, I noticed the hardships of people, especially young women and children, who are forced into labor and commercial sexual exploitation. In Ghana, trafficking is local, and it mostly involves children and young women. Every day, children and young women are forced to labor in agriculture, street hawking, fishing industries; to work as porters; or to beg, most often for religious instructors. Girls are mostly trafficked within the country for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation. They work 24 hours a day without pay and often without food. As a youth organizer, I think a discussion about women and trafficking is needed. Women here work for other people every day and don’t get enough money to support themselves and their family. They’re told to stay silent, not to reveal the secret of being forced to work. Otherwise, it’s back to the street or back to their countries. Trafficking is an issue for domestic workers and care givers.”
Margie replied: “Coming from a culture with strong teachings of respect for adults and people in general, I think care hits home for me. Several of my aunts and family friends work in areas where care is the entire basis of their jobs: RN’s, LPN’s, CNA’s, live-in nurses, nannies, day-care owners. These people care so much about the work they do, and take such good care of their clients, but too often their work is unrecognized. That needs to change. Around here, so many African women do care work. They are loving, caring, hard-working women trying to earn an honest living. Like so many other immigrants in this country, these women do the work that many don’t respect or recognize … but need. If Ghanaian and immigrant workers generally become aware of such campaigns, they could spread to the home countries because care jobs are international, not just in the US. The rights of the worker should be recognized wherever they are.”
Want to focus on African women domestic workers? Fine. Focus on the struggle for dignity and the challenge to care. Leave “plight” at the door, please.
* Image from Ian van Coller’s “Interior Relations,” a series of portraits of domestic workers in South Africa.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Lola Adesioye about
the difference
between being black in the UK
and being black in the US
“Being black in the UK doesn't mean the same as being black in the US,” said writer and international journalist Lola Adesioye (1980) at the end of her spoken words performance in the PenTales Travel and Migration event (see video).During her performance the London born Cambridge graduate of Nigerian descent, who now lives in New York, also talked about identity, being a "search culture kid" and about one question that irritates her the most. "One of the most annoying questions is 'where are you from'. Because I really don't know how to answer it. Especially when I am in England."
But after her performance she said something she didn't explain. “Being black in the UK doesn't mean the same as being black in the US.” Because I wanted to know the answer from a black British perspective I asked her if should could explain the difference. So in her own words, the answer.
"For a start, everyone who is black in the UK, is a black person from somewhere else. We know that we are all children of immigrants. We are now on the 2nd and 3rd generation born of black Brits, but we know that we are not English ethnically (English still denotes white anyway), and we also know that British is a catch-all term that is meaningless in many ways because there isn't really such thing as "British culture", being that Great Britain is a conglomeration of a few countries that don't have much in common with one another.
SO, we are all black people with a strong sense of having come from somewhere else - Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Barbados, and wherever else. We still have ties and links to our heritage and ancestry. Even if a black Briton has never been to their parents or grandparents homeland, they are still raised with a sense of being African or Caribbean. There are people in the UK who still ask British-born blacks where they are from, meaning where you are originally from. This wouldn't happen in the US, unless they are asking what part of America you come from.This can be a strength because it means that a black Briton's definition of black is somewhat broader and is more connected to age old traditions from Africa and the Caribbean - I think this is very healthy.
In the US, they are several generations and hundreds of years deep when it comes to being black. Most black Americans have no idea where they originally came from due to slavery. So their understanding of being black is within an American context. It is not related to Africa or an island or to a culture outside of the US.
This means a few things: 1) black Americans have created - have had to create! - their own culture - and ways of being. There is a black American experience(s) and a distinctly black American expression. You see this with fraternities, sororities, colleges you can go to, areas you can hang out in, shops, dances, lifestyles, politics, organizations. There is a whole black American world that exists in America and it is also sub divivided.
You could be black in the US and not really mix much with white people if you didn't want to. Black America is a pretty self-reliant world (even if black Americans don't think so!), and there is a perspective on what it means to be black that black Brits don't have. I think black Britons are still struggling to find their identity in the UK and I think there is less sense of solidarity and community than there is in the US, although this may change with time.
Black Britons do not have anything like the level of self organization, identity or ways of being that black Americans have. One, because we are a much smaller population, also because we still have strong links back to our original heritage, because we came as immigrants and that came with a sense of the UK being a host nation, and also because the history was not so segregated as to allow for the development of a particularly strong black British identity.
Also in the UK, there is more interaction among the races even if there is not as much advancement as black Americans have. I'd say that in the US there is less integration but more advancement, or opportunities for advancement.
I also find that black people in the US are a lot more proud to be black and make no qualms about it, whereas black Brits are almost afraid or ashamed - somehow they think it's being racist to be black and proud. Black Americans also will claim their space and claim their rights because America is THEIR country, whereas black Brits I think still give the impression that they have to wait to be granted opportunities rather than going and taking or creating them - although it wasn't always that way.
I also think that black Britons can't help but have a bit of a colonial mentality going on whereas black Americans don't have that. America is the only place many of them know, and they have no ties that they know of to anywhere else, so they have to know and claim their rightful space."
Also, as an educated black middle class person I've found many more people like me in the US and I no longer have to downplay being privileged or feel weird about it like I did in England. Nor am I now just the only one black girl in the room all the time. I can be proud to be black and not feel weird about saying it. I can talk about issues that impact me as a black person and have room to do so and not pretend it's not real. And then I can also not do any of that and be a black Briton here in the US.
There are similarities of course... I think racism and inequality for example operates in pretty much the same way everywhere, or has the same effects. But there are some fundamental differences."
Check out her website at http://lolaadesioye.com/
Bud Powell
Very rare documentary: Bud Powell, l’Exil Intérieur
A VHS-transfer of a very rare 1999 French documentary ‘l’Exil Intérieur’ (‘Internal Exile’) by director Robert Mugnerot, partly in French. Great footage of Bud Powell in Paris.